Royal Purple: The Hublot Big Bang Automatic Tourbillon Purple Sapphire

Every color has a life of its own – entire books have been written about blue, for instance; the color is fascinating partly thanks to the fact that actual blue pigment is extremely rare in nature, and real blue artist’s pigment – ultramarine – was once so rare that to this day you can see Renaissance paintings which couldn’t be finished because the pigment, which was made from ground lapis lazuli imported from Afghanistan – was in too short supply. The color purple is the most regal – optically it’s a combination of red and blue, but as a pigment, it was famous two thousand years ago for its rarity and cost as well. In ancient Rome, strict sumptuary laws governed its use – only the Emperor was allowed to wear robes completely dyed purple, and one born into the imperial family was said to be born, “in the purple.”

It’s an extremely rare color in luxury watchmaking, and I’m not sure why, although it might have to do with the fact that it is such a strong color that it’s almost impossible to get it to play nice with other design elements. One place you do occasionally see purple used in watchmaking, is in gem set watches – amethyst, spinel, and tourmaline all exist in various shades of purple but the king among purple gemstones is probably purple sapphire (blue sapphire gets a lot of love as well). Sapphires as a part of a larger ensemble of polychromatic glory is one way of taming their tendency to dominate the conversation, but another way of handling a diva is to just let them take center stage sans competition or collaboration. Which is pretty much exactly what Hublot has done with the Big Bang Automatic Tourbillon Purple Sapphire, which was released in 2022, and which has a 44mm x 14.5mm case in solid – and purple – synthetic sapphire; the watch at launch was announced as a 50 piece limited edition.

The BB Automatic Tourbillon Purple Sapphire is in a certain sense, just what it says on the tin – a watch with a case in full synthetic sapphire, in a deep, saturated purple, with an integrated microrotor tourbillon movement.

This year at Watches & Wonders, Hublot was at pains to emphasize its movement design and manufacturing capabilities and the caliber HUB6035 is certain a respectable and technically interesting movement, built for transparency (a critical feature for a movement meant for a watch that is in a very real sense, all about light transmission) and with a neat, well organized vertical symmetry that pairs the tourbillon cage with the microrotor assembly, which runs in ceramic ball bearings for durability and which offers a three day power reserve. The movement gets into the sapphire game as well, incorporating three sapphire bridges which, true to their purpose, are almost invisible to the naked eye. It’s also Hublot’s first in house automatic tourbillon movement.

The sapphire bridges are extremely thin and such bridges are fairly rare in modern watchmaking, although the use of transparent minerals for watch cases and movements is much older than synthetic sapphire – there are pendant watches from the 17th century with carved rock crystal cases, and the American Waltham Watch Co. made watches with rock crystal plates and bridges as well, which are quite spectacular. As a material for series produced watches it is probably orders of magnitude harder to work with than brass, from which most plates and bridges are still made today – it’s a very hard material but also one that doesn’t tolerate much tweaking, for that very reason, so the depth and position of jewels (for instance) is something you have to get right the first time.

However, and not to disparage Hublot’s technical accomplishments, this is the brand that gave us names for watches and materials like Big Bang and King Gold, and watches like the 50 day power reserve La Ferrari (which I always thought should have been nicknamed “Dark Helmet”) and while we may be gladdened by Hublot’s technical achievements, they are something in the nature of supporting players for the emotional impact the brand has always tried to generate. The backstage technical wizardry of broadways shows like Harry Potter And The Cursed Child might be incredible achievements in and of themselves, but people come to the theater to see the show and so it is with Hublot.

Wear this watch and the first question people ask you when they see it is probably not going be about the history, purpose, and technical meaning of the tourbillon. It’s probably going to be an audible intake of breath, followed by a whispered “wow” and then something along the lines of asking what it’s made of, where you got it, what it’s like to wear it and of course, once your hypothetical interlocutor finds out that the case is indeed a solid hunk of colored sapphire, what you might have to say about The Unpleasant Matter Of The Bill. If you want to be able to tell them an interesting technical story about the case, it’s definitely there – synthetic sapphire crystals large enough to produce watch cases are a niche within a niche in Swiss watch manufacture and involve growing enormous raw sapphire crystals from aluminum oxide powder in thermal reactors capable of approximating the conditions under which natural corundum crystals occur. As in nature, the color is the result of the addition of trace elements to the aluminum oxide – in this case, chromium.

But ultimately, this watch is all about the Wow factor. And the truth is, at a time when watchmaking is going overall through what might kindly be called a conservative phase (incremental and timid would be less kind ways of putting it, in increasing order of unkindness) I feel as if this sort of thing is important. Irrational exuberance may have its pitfalls but a little unabashed exuberance right now is refreshing – maybe we could all do with a little more of it (or in this case a lot more of it) in our lives.

See It Here